DPP’s hopes are on tribalism, regionalism

For a party that thrives on tribalism and nepotism in the 21st Century, I am not surprised that the DPP is doing all it can to frustrate the Electoral Bills that are meant to bring sanity to our elections.

What is wrong with making sure that we have a president with a broad mandate, one we can all be proud of? What is wrong with making sure that the polling station is efficiently managed to safeguard the will of the people in elections?

But I do get it. DPP knows fully well that there is nothing wrong in demolishing nepotism, tribalism and regionalism.

The only difference is that President Peter Mutharika and his DPP bootlickers are sacrificing the common good at the altar of narrow partisan interests because they believe their only chance to win an election is when someone will remember which tribe they are and which region they come from.

They know they have failed decimally to govern this country. They are a bunch of liars who are good at promising heaven to Malawians, when they pretty well know that what they will deliver is hell.

They cannot implement anything tangible and incompetence among them runs deep.

You just have to look at how they are failing to find a solution to the energy crisis, the chaos in that sector and the conclusion is always the same: We have a bunch of incompetents governing.

And the chaos is deep and debilitating. Today, the President will promise blackouts will end in December because generators are on the way and, tomorrow, his Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe will trumpet importation of power through an interconnector to Mozambique or Zambia.

After that, they will also talk about building more Hydro-power Stations or empowering the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to help supply power into Escom grid.

At the end of the day, all you have is chaos and nothing happens as Malawians are in blackouts and their livelihoods are threatened and the administration does not seem to care.

Corruption and cronyism are on the rise. Honest and hard-working Malawians are literally slaves who break their backs to pay tax, yet it ends up getting stolen by DPP thieves at Capital Hill.

Simply put, this is a government that must be voted out faster than it came and it knows it.

The DPP government knows Malawians are angry and the anger was clearly on display on October 17 when voters delivered a stunning blow by not voting for it in by-elections across the country, from Lilongwe to Nsanje via Blantyre.

The reality that DPP might be heading for 2019 electoral disaster is not lost on the mind of the party.

Its only hope lies in tribalism, regionalism and nepotism.

Somehow, this administration thinks that voters will forget about its incompetence, rampant corruption and general bad governance and vote for it by remembering their tribes and regions.

This is arrogance and insolence of the first order. It assumes that Malawians are zombies who will leave thieves to continue stealing their tax by retaining them in government regardless.

DPP is in a false comfort zone. Malawians have voted on regional lines in the past, alright; but they have also shown that they can punish political parties that sacrifice their interests in preference to partisanship.

That is why the late Bingu wa Mutharika won the 2009 elections by a resounding 66 percent of the vote and it was not from one region but all the three administrative regions.

This is what the DPP is missing. Regionalism and tribalism have consumed the party’s soul and they now guide its stand on national matters.

The DPP government lied to Malawians that crucial electoral bills were not ready when the reality is that they had been ready long time ago but that all it was doing is to find excuses to delay them so that Parliament could rise without putting a finger on them.

The obsession, with the view that DPP will continue benefitting from regionalism, has even led to characters such as Grace Chiumia throwing away all protocol by showering insults on Public Affairs Committee (Pac) members, who are largely religious leaders.

This is immoral. What crime has Pac committed, apart from championing that we have robust electoral laws that will ensure the integrity of election results and the credibility and acceptability of a man or woman sitting at the State House? What is wrong with this? Why is the President not seeing this?

Why can’t he accept that he has failed to govern us and maintain his integrity by refusing to stand in the 2019 polls and retire to the US quietly?

I cannot understand how a whole professor of law could be resisting reforms to tighten elections because he thinks he will be a beneficiary of tribalism and regionalism in systems 21st Century Malawi.

We are a professional media organisation determined to support a well- governed Malawi whose leadership seeks to better the lives of the poor. We aim at giving you the latest news, reports and analysis about our beloved country, the Warm Heart of Africa. Our reporters and analysts are among the very finest Malawi has to offer.